Sudden Prey

as she’s at the top of the ramp.”
    “Do that,” Del said.
    Kupicek was watching the van: “She’s got some discipline. I don’t think we touched fifty-six since we got on the road.”
    “She’s a pro,” Dell said.
    “If it was me, I’d be so freaked, I’d be doing ninety. Course, maybe they’re not gonna do it.”
    “They’re gonna do it,” Del said. He could feel it: they were gonna do it.
     
     
     
    GEORGIE LACHAISE WAS a dark woman with blue eyes that looked out from under too-long, too-thick eyebrows. She had a fleshy French nose, full lips with the corners down-turned. She locked Duane Cale’s eyes across the table and said, “Duane, you motherfucker, if you drive off, I’ll find you and I’ll shoot you in the fuckin’ back. I promise you.”
    Duane leaned forward over the yellow Formica table, both hands wrapped around an oversized cup of Coke Classic. He had an unformed face, and hair that had never picked a color: one eyewitness might say he was blond, another would swear that he had brown hair. One would say apple-cheeked, another would say fox-faced. He seemed to change, even as you looked at him. He wore a camouflage army jacket over jeans and boots, with the collar turned up, and a Saints baseball hat.
    “Oh, I’ll do it,” he said, “but it don’t feel right. It just don’t feel right. I mean, we did that one in Rice Lake, I was good there.”
    “You were perfect in Rice Lake,” Georgie said. She thought, You were so scared I thought we’d have to carry you out. “This time, all you gotta do is drive.”
    “Okay, you see right there?” asked Duane, tapping the tabletop with the cup. “You said it your own self: I was perfect. This don’t feel perfect, today. No sir. I mean, I’ll do it if you say so, but I . . .”
    Georgie cut him off. “I say so,” she said bluntly. She glanced at her watch. “Candy’ll be here in a minute. You get your asshole puckered up and get behind the wheel and everything’ll go smooth. You know what to do. You only gotta drive two blocks. You’ll be perfect.”
    “Well, okay . . .” His Adam’s apple bobbed. Duane Cale was too scared to spit and the Coca-Cola didn’t seem to make a difference.
     
     
     
    LUCAS DAVENPOR TPEELED off his topcoat and the gray Icelandic sweater. Sloan handed him the vest and Lucas shrugged into it, slapping the Velcro tabs into place, everything nice and snug, except if you took a shot in the armpit it’d go right through your heart and both lungs on the way out the opposite ’pit . . . Never turn sideways.
    “Fuckin’ cold,” Sloan said. He was a narrow, sideways-looking man who today wore a rabbit-fur hat. “We live in fuckin’ Russia. The Soviet fuckin’ Union.”
    “Is no Soviet Union,” Lucas said. They were in a drugstore parking lot, Lucas and Sloan and Sherrill, and had gotten out of the slightly warm car to put on the vests. A loitering civilian watched them as his dog, wearing a blue jacket, sniffed up an ice-bound curb.
    “I know,” Sloan said. “It moved here.”
    Lucas pulled the sweater back over his head, then slipped back into his topcoat. He was a tall man, dark-haired, dark-complected with ice-blue eyes. A scar trailed through one brow ridge and expired on his cheek, a white line like a scratch across his face. As his head popped through the sweater’s neck hole, he was grinning at Sloan, an old friend: “Who was trying to start a departmental ski team?”
    “Hey, you gotta do something in the middle of the . . .”
    The radio broke in: “Lucas?”
    Lucas picked up the handset: “Yeah.”
    “On the 280 ramp,” Del said.
    “Got it . . . you get that, Franklin?”
    Franklin came back, his voice chilled. “I got it. I can see LaChaise and Cale, they’re still sitting there. They look like they’re arguing.”
    “Keep moving,” Lucas said.
    “I’m moving. I’m so fuckin’ cold I’m afraid to stop.”
    “On University . . .” Del said.
    “We better go,” Sherrill said. Her face was pink with the cold, and nicely framed by her kinky black hair. She wore a black leather jacket with tight jeans and gym shoes, and furry white mittens that she’d bought in a sale from a cop catalog. The mittens were something a high school kid might wear, but had a trigger-finger slit, like hunting gloves. “She’ll be picking them up.”
    “Yeah.” Lucas nodded, and they climbed into the city car, Sloan in the driver’s seat, Sherrill next to him, Lucas sprawled in